Vulgar Quotes - Page 4

• It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.

  E. M. Forster

  Mind, Vices, Literature

  E.M. Forster (2015). “Howard's End”, p.28, Xist Publishing

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• Whoever is ignorant is vulgar.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Ignorance, Ignorant

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Quixote de la Mancha (don, fict.name.) (1818). “Don Quixote de la Mancha. Tr. [by M. Smirke].”, p.184

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• Our vulgar perception is not concerned with other than vulgar phenomena.

  Samuel Beckett

  Perception, Experience, Concerned

  Samuel Beckett, Georges Duthuit (1965). “Proust”

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• The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Taken, World, Crowds

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• Will without intellect is the most vulgar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead, who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he is made.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Passion, World, Stuff

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “The Wisdom of Life”, p.30, Cosimo Classics

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• The man is a humbug — a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Angel, Men

  Diary entry regarding Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, in July 1924. "Letters of C. S. Lewis". Book edited by W. H. Lewis, p. 97, 1966.

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• It is only the vulgar who are always fancying themselves insulted. If a man treads on another's toe in good society, do you think it is taken as an insult?

  Lady Hester Stanhope

  Taken, Men, Thinking

  Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope (1845). “Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope: As Related by Herself in Conversations with Her Physician; Comprising Her Opinions and Anecdotes of Some of the Most Remarkable Persons of Her Time”, p.212

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• He whom common, gross, or stale objects allure, and when obtained, content, is a vulgar being, incapable of greatness in thought or action.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Greatness, Action, Common

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• Loud dress becomes offensive to people of taste, as evincing an undue desire to reach and impress the untrained sensibilities of the vulgar.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Fashion, Clothes, People

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.116, e-artnow

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• I didn't cry when I left free-booting, smash-and-grab papers that would have appeared to be far more natural homes for me and, at the risk of being vulgar, paid far better for my services.

  Julie Burchill

  Home, Risk, Paper

  "The long goodbye" by Julie Burchill, www.theguardian.com. December 26, 2003.

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• Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Style, Study, Intense

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.177

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• Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Stupid, Taken, Thinking

  "Scarborough Country" with Joe Scarborough, www.nbcnews.com. May 18, 2004.

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• Though essaying but a sportive sail, I was driven from my course by a blast re sistless; and ill-provided, young, and bowed by the brunt of things before my prime, still fly before the gale. ... If after all these fearful fainting trances, the verdict be, the golden haven was not gained; yet in bold quest thereof, better to sink in boundless deeps than float on vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do.

  Herman Melville

  Giving, Quests, Wrecks

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4644, Delphi Classics

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• Daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity.

  Max Weber

  Reality, Vanity, Enemy

  Max Weber (2013). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.116, Routledge

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• I don't do any vulgar movements.

  Elvis Presley

  Movement

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• What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.

  William Hazlitt

  Fashion, Clothes, Trying

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays by W. H. Now first collected [and edited] by his son”, p.244

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• If one were truly aware of the value of human life, to waste it blithely on distractions and the pursuit of vulgar ambitions would be the height of confusion.

  Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

  Wisdom, Ambition, Buddhism

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• My erotic poetry is not poetry that uses vernacular words. It is a very erotic poetry, but I never use anything, for example, that is not in the dictionary. I don't like to be ugly, I seek out what is beautiful, and if my great search is for freedom and beauty, I can't be vulgar, ordinary.

  Maria Teresa Horta

  Beautiful, Ugly, Dictionary

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you[for helping me]. I almost feel as if You ought to be grateful to ME, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. . . I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by giving you an opportunity of assisting me.

  Charles Dickens

  Gratitude, Grateful, Opportunity

  Charles Dickens (2006). “Bleak House: Easyread Edition”, p.108, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The meal was pretentious - a kind of beetroot soup with greasy croutons; pork underdone with loud vulgar cabbage, potato croquettes, tinned peas in tiny jam-tart cases, watery gooseberry sauce; trifle made with a resinous wine, so jammy that all my teeth lit up at once.

  Anthony Burgess

  Wine, Vegetables, Meals

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• The Italian landscape has always harmonized the vulgar and the Vitruvian: the contorni around the duomo, the portiere'S laundry across the padrone's portone, Supercortemaggiore against the Romanesque apse. Naked children have never played in our fountains, and I. M. Pei will never be happy on Route 66.

  Robert Venturi

  Children, Italian, Naked

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• And finally - he was neither able nor willing to prevent it - the self-loathing dammed up inside him spilled over and gushed out, gushed out of glaring eyes that grew ever grimmer, angrier, beneath the rim of his cap, flooding the outside world as perfect, vulgar hate.

  Patrick Süskind

  Hate, Eye, Self

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• She dealt her pretty words like Blades -- How glittering they shone -- And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone -- She never deemed -- she hurt -- That -- is not Steel's Affair -- A vulgar grimace in the Flesh -- How ill the Creatures bear -- To Ache is human -- not polite -- The Film upon the eye Mortality's old Custom -- Just locking up -- to Die.

  Emily Dickinson

  Hurt, Eye, Steel

  Emily Dickinson (2012). “Emily Dickinson: Everyman's Poetry”, p.83, Hachette UK

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• I was like you once, long time ago. I believed in the dignity of man. Decency. Humanity. But I was lucky. I found out the truth early, boy. And what is the truth, Stark? It's all very simple. There's no such thing as the dignity of man. Man is a base, pathetic and vulgar animal.

  Charles Grandison Finney

  Men, Animal, Boys

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